Published on 14 Feb 2007
| Took place at Hyatt Regency Sanctuary Cove, Qld, National

Since our last conference in February 2006, the focus of the financial services industry has been pursuing new opportunities domestically and internationally. The title of this year’s conference, Financial Services Unleashed, reflects this, the aim being to provide technical and practical insights into the taxation issues that are emerging.
Themes addressed during the conference included:
- increased international investment, particularly in infrastructure, supported by legislative developments such as conduit foreign income and foreign hybrids, but constrained by provisions such as Divisions 6B and 6C
- product developments and convergence, supported by fundamental superannuation
reform, but with the new concerns of promoter penalties and the constant battle to rationalise legacy products
- capital management, examining both the raising and returning of capital, looking at buybacks,
sophisticated capital raisings and tainting.

how you can still obtain the mere advice exception when also drafting documents and preparing accounts

when you will be acting as more than an adviser and have a penalty exposure

whether you have a problem if the promoter uses your advice letter in the marketing material and, if so, how you can protect yourself.

This paper includes some minor updates made by Mark Robertson for presentation on 15 February 2007 at the 2007 Financial Services Taxation Conference held on the Gold Coast and on 23 February 2007 at the Promoter Penalties seminar held in Brisbane.